Prosecutors demanded Tuesday life in prison for Tatsuya Ichihashi over the March 2007 rape and murder of English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker.
Ichihashi, 32, who is also accused of abandoning Hawker's corpse and who has admitted raping her and causing her death, had a strong motive to strangle the 22-year-old Briton: he didn't want to be arrested for raping her, the prosecutors said in their closing statement in the lay judge trial at the Chiba District Court.
"I didn't mean to kill her, and I never thought it was OK for her to die. What I did cannot be forgiven, but I wanted the court to know these two things," Ichihashi said when he was allowed to speak as the trial closed.